Love Your SIS Again!
Prestige
Dave Bracken, President and Robert Dobles, Implementations Manager/Report Developer, Prestige
How to Love Your SIS Again!
Chris Linford:
Welcome. Welcome, you guys.
Dave Bracken:
Welcome. Hey, thank you very much. This is so exciting. I do have to say that the last two guys had the best hair and I think all day long we need to judge everybody based on their hair. So unfortunately, Robert and I are coming to this a little bit behind everybody else, so I don’t have this spiky hair like Chris does or Daniels. Wow, that was fantastic, everything he had. So instead we just have to talk about our software. Okay. Can you see the screens? I don’t know what everybody can see because we’re trying to work this thing out as well.
Chris Linford:
Yep, we can see the slide, “How to love your SIS again.”
Dave Bracken:
All right, fantastic. All right. Today’s presentation is something that we live with every day, “How do we love our SIS?” After that great keynote, this is probably a little bit toned down one step or two, but what we wanted to do was not necessarily present as a vendor as opposed to who we are and as school owners.
Who is Prestige?
So Prestige itself, we are a student information system built by school owners for school owners. This is specifically designed for clock hour based environments that we all live in, cosmetology, barber, massage, skincare. But what we did was we tied everything that we at the school use together with the SIS, and so we integrated our time clock, we integrated a point of sale, our document management, graduate requirement tracking, our financial aid. So we integrated with third party financial aid processors or even schools do it themselves through our system.
We integrated and created e-signatures and forms so that we can electronically create all of our enrollment agreements, SAP documents. Having a little bit of time getting going here. So one of the other things that we also did is we built a recent mobile application for our students so that our students can clock in and out of our systems with their phones or see their details with the phones. All in all, we have about 115 schools that are using our system across the country since 2017
Who is Bene’s Career Academy?
We are owned by Bene’s Career Academy. So who’s Bene’s Career Academy? We are a two campus school just north and west of Tampa, Florida, and pretty much we’ve been in business for 35 years. We have over 300 students, 10 different programs. But what we came to the realization is that we have skillsets, much like Daniel talked about just recently.
Who are We?
There’s a lot of other skillsets and experiences that you bring to the table when you look at what you’re doing. So Robert and I both came from outside industries, both very high technical and for me personally, I was in the banking industry. I made banking software for 20 years. I was a certified work process improvement specialist. So that means I was qualified to go into banks and create systems similar to something that you’re looking at right now. We put in a document imaging system and a payment processing system for 40 of the top a hundred banks in the country using all kinds of advanced technologies. So this is an example of the thing running. So it scans and it documents and it slices and it dices and it does every other cool thing in the world along the way but what we learned was that there’s a lot of technology, a lot of ways to do things.
And with that mindset, that’s what I walked into the beauty school industry. And much like Daniels said, it’s funny, I don’t know if he saw my presentation, but he talked about some of the stuff. A lot of people’s experiences are based on their past experience or what they’re bringing to the table because we’ve always done it before. And so when I walked into the beauty school the first day, this is kind of what it looked like because this is what we’ve always done before. This is our record retention room. So if I had that cool, “Aha,” form environment, I could say, “Who else has something that looks like that?” And only a few people will probably raise their hand, but probably everyone nods a little bit. But what we did was we had paper everywhere for 35 years. They never threw away a piece of paper.
File Organization
We had 17 filing cabinets. We had a storage trailer behind our school. We held over 215,000 documents for over 30 years, and we needed to be able to pull those records out much like everybody else. NACCAS’s calls, our state auditor’s call, being able to get that information out and being able to provide it to the people that need it is very important.
The Record Retention Process
So I went back to my experiences as a work process improvement specialist, and if you talk about document retention, and that’s really what we’re hitting a little bit about today is one of the things that we love about our SIS is that it allows us to be paper free. And so today’s presentation talks a little bit about how you could be paper free in your operations. The steps in the process are either capture, create, you index, you archive, store, and then you retrieve.
How Do You Do That in Your SIS System?
Capture
So how do you do that in your SIS system and what did we learn along the way? So for us, being able to put into the student’s hands the ability with their phone that they can take pictures of documents or scan them here at the campus and have that go directly into the student’s profile in the SIS immediately starts to build their archive, immediately starts to build their folders, immediately starts to build all the other information that we have on them as they’re going through the process.
Create
So even when they start off as leads, we built into our SIS system, we have a CRM, so customer relationship management, so new leads. So a prospect fills out a form online, says, “I’m interested in going to school,” automatically comes into our system and it also kicks off any notification or notes that we would send internally or externally to the student to say, “Hey, you need to put up a picture of your driver’s license” or my admission staff, “Hey, you got a brand new lead that just came in.”
So being able to interact, being able to take those technology components into what was always a very old process into a very manual process, that’s the excitement, that’s the spark that we love about our SIS. The other things that we built into there from the create side is the forms. So we’ve actually built into our system all of the different forms that we would be using, so NACCAS’s compliant enrollment agreements or even your SAP reports with signatures and everything else, all is tied into it so that way we’re not creating paper. We’re electronically creating all these documents and we’re storing them in our system to where they’re indexed. Robert?
Index
Robert Dobles:
So what that does is that helps create efficiencies. It builds efficiencies operationally, right? In some of the efficiencies it builds, you can even get the students to upload those documents that you’re requiring at the school. It doesn’t have to all be on the person that is doing the admissions, doing all the paperwork and the filing. There are documentations the student can file themselves and it also saves time. And by saving time, think of the life cycle of your students.
They go through admissions, they go through just being a student, then they’ve got to graduate. Well, there’s a lot of documentations they have to collect along the way and receive along the way. If they had a quick way to reference it or the school had a very quick way to reference it, be able to drop that document or grab that document and print it out because it’s required, signature’s already on there, they can provide it to where they need to go, it makes the process a lot smoother, stress a lot lower. When it comes to auditing your records, the compliance side, it gives you the warm and fuzzies, “I think I’m doing a good job at my school.”
Dave Bracken:
Okay, so as your index, as we define the documents that you need in the system, you define what you can do with it. So again, I’m not giving you a commercial on our system, I’m just talking about the processes is that you capture index, organize, store, and retrieve.
Organize/Store
So the organize and store, cloud-based always as opposed to a local server, gives you some flexibilities, ability to do it anywhere else. Some of the lessons learned that we learned out here too, so I really can’t reply to everybody, but some of the things is also being able to identify if I’ve stored it, is it still there? So tools out there to say, “Hey, I’m supposed to account from ID, social security card, high school verification.” Boy, if those items aren’t in the folder, my auditor goes after me.
So I want to make sure that those items have been captured, that they’re electronically recorded and they’re electronically accounted for. So anytime any system that you’re scanning, you want to also be able to have an ability to identify what is all there and frankly, what’s missing or what needs to be added.
Retrieval
And then the final piece is the retrieval. You want to, once you see it and store it, being able to get back to it, either you, your auditors, your compliance, or anyone else that’s looking for those types of documents. Being able to get to them quickly becomes very, very important.
Challenges
One of the final things, and then being able to get rid of it. What do you do with your documents when you’re done? At our school, at the end of the admissions process, we shred everything. We shred all of our documents. The little trick is that we kind of hold them in a closet and store them for about three weeks until we make sure that there was nothing else that was really needed. But after three weeks, everything gets shredded, but we do not keep the paper documents around. So we had to teach our staff how to manage that. Some of the challenges that come into play, being paperless is not always good. There are things that are in our world that aren’t paper free. So being able to be flexible in your environment, being flexible in your workflow, being flexible in your configurations is very important because not everybody is an ideal candidate for document management or everyone at your school.
The only other challenges that we had was what to do with the filing cabinets. So we had to figure out some creative places for what to do with all of those. What I was saying was really not everybody at the school is ready for it. This is my admissions officer. She’s 82 years old, she was the original owner of the school. She doesn’t want anything to do with the system and imaging. So what we did is we let her hold the paper the same way she does, we have a millennial that follows her around and scans everything for her. And then once she’s done and the student’s enrolled, we shred the folder.
Map Out Your Workflow Process
o you look at your processes, look at your different steps, match your workflow, identify different steps along the way that you’re doing, and then where in there are you capturing the documents or where is the document being created. Finding your workflow where that happens, being able to create that electronically, and store it electronically really comes into play.
Compliance
One of the things people ask us about a lot is compliance. “Great, I’m going to image everything, but what if NACCAS comes back and says, “You can’t have it,” or I need the paper?” So we actually went out and we got in writing from each one of the accreditors, this is COE saying that they don’t require you to have paper records. This is Eddie from NACCAS who says that, “As long as you have the ability to print out the paper when someone’s on site, if they ask for it, great. Otherwise, keep it electronic.” As well as the Department of Education through the Paper Reduction Act of, I think it was 1995 that Al Gore pushed through, pretty much says that anything that’s electronic signature is the replacement of a paper signature. So giving our auditors the ability to get information out of the system becomes extremely important.
Being able to get the data out easily, being able to store it effectively, being able to get away from the paper really helped us learn how to love our SIS again.
Want More Info About Prestige? Contact Them!
Now I’m not supposed to do a big sales presentation and I’m really not, but on here there’s a 2D barcode. We just saw Daniels’ cool tool. I don’t have the ability to do the thumbs up through it, but if you scan on here, you can enter in your information and your school’s information, and then someone will be in touch with you, a little bit more information at a little bit slower level of our environment and of our system. So with that, I’m going to turn it back to the guys with the great hair unless if there’s a way to open this up for questions or whatever, I don’t know, Parker or Chris, how to do that side of this.
Chris Linford:
Yeah, I think if anybody has a question, they should put it in the chat for you or if you guys want to put your emails in the chat. Obviously you’ve got the QR code there with the email address. And then what’s the best URL? If people want to learn more information, where should they be directed to?
Dave Bracken:
Well, at Bene’s, we contracted with USOE to make our website. So benes.edu is one of the coolest websites around, but prestigesis.com is where you get information about Prestige. Frankly, just take a picture of this or email to me. That’s probably the easiest way to get to this information.
Chris Linford:
Got it.
Dave Bracken:
So that’s us. We are a proud USOE user. We’re excited about this content. We’re super jazzed about today. We’re glad that you guys in involved us and we love our SIS.
Chris Linford:
Yes, absolutely. And thank you so much for being a part of us. A lot of good information. So we’re going to keep you on for just a few more minutes.
Dave Bracken:
How long am I supposed to go towards, guys? I thought we went till 12:30.
Chris Linford:
Yeah, we’ve got about five more minutes. Yeah, if there’s anything else that you want to share, but I think what we want to do with you guys is you guys wanted to give away.
Dave Bracken:
Yes.
Chris Linford:
Access to Prestige for six months. You want to talk about that a little bit?
Dave Bracken:
Yeah, thank you, Chris. So Prestige is a software as a service model. That means that we charge based on the number of active students that are there every month. So we do a monthly billing as opposed to a one-time bill upfront. So what we are offering or what we’re doing today is any school that’s interested or that goes through here, we’re going to do a drawing for one of them, or the USOE guys are going to do that. You would get six months free of using our software. So that can be up to, I said $6,000, but it depends upon the number of students that you have to be able to use our system.
Chris Linford:
Got it. So we do have some questions in the chat.
Dave Bracken:
Good.
Chris Linford:
Lori asks, “Do these documents have the ability to generate outgoing correspondence from a website inquiry for initial contact?”
Dave Bracken:
What a great question! One of the biggest challenges that we hear in the industry from people, experts like our friends at USOE is they say, “If anyone asks you about information at your school, you got to be able to respond to them within five to 10 minutes. Otherwise, they’re going to go off somewhere else.” So having built in the components is being able to… Because at three o’clock in the morning is usually when people all decide to go to beauty school. Hands down, that’s number one time that everyone wants to learn more about your school is at three o’clock in the morning.
So what we built into the environments is automatic replies to those, automatic workflows based off of those. So if someone says, “Hey, I’m interested in massage,” I can automatically send them a note or documents of information on massage or they want financial aid, here’s how to fill out your FAFSA. So yes, there’s a lot of fun ways technology wise that you can use to reply to prospect’s information so that way you are able to answer them at three o’clock in the morning and they’re not off to the next career school or something else along that way.
Robert Dobles:
Sorry, Dave, I’m doing a typical Prestige thing. I’m manning the chat for you.
Dave Bracken:
Oh, thank you. Is there anything else on there, Robert?
Robert Dobles:
Question was, “Are we able to store old student files from previous years?”
Dave Bracken:
At my school, we put in Prestige in 2017, but we’ve been in business since ’87. So when we moved our paper records to electronic, we created PDFs of those. That’s what I recommend everybody do no matter what you’re dealing with. Any systems, any technology, use PDF as your storage tool because it gives you the security. It also gives you the ability to put multiple documents together into one. So what we’ve done is students that were prior to our system, we scanned their entire folder, put it into an archived or a graduated PDF file and then stored that within the student record.
So we store student records like their name and their profile electronically going back for every student, but their files, electronic file, we put that in as the PDF. So yeah, you can do it. There’s a little bit of challenge sometimes in being able to pull it from one system to another, taking it from paper to electronic. That comes back to a little bit of the workflow and the know-how along the way. And that’s usually what we hope to do because we’ve done the very same thing that everyone of our customers have gone through. Robert, anything else? Any other questions?
Robert Dobles:
More Questions.
Dave Bracken:
Yeah.
Robert Dobles:
Laurie asked, “Does this store the contact information in a file once the autotechnology replies?” I’ll answer this one. Laurie, it does an initial contact capture. So it has the preinformation of that prospect that’s communicating before the automation goes out. And then if anything is updated, so based on the workflow of that student, where the admissions process goes, then the data is updated further and then other automations can go out based on that.
Dave Bracken:
Okay. All right.
Chris Linford:
All right. So I think there are more questions, Robert.
Dave Bracken:
Yeah, we’ll figure those out afterwards.
Chris Linford:
If you want to take note of those, maybe write them down. Or just continue in the chat after this. Dave, if you wouldn’t mind putting your email back up on the screen on slide with QR code?
Dave Bracken:
Okay.
Chris Linford:
Anybody who is interested in six months of free access, again this is a $6,000 value, please email Dave and in the subject line put, “Giveaway,” so that he knows that you’re interested in this free access. And then they will go ahead and email the winner.
Dave Bracken:
Okay. Thank you.
Chris Linford:
Okay. Dave, thanks so much.
Dave Bracken:
All right, guys.
Chris Linford:
Appreciate you guys.
Dave Bracken:
Thanks again for doing this. We are super excited. We can’t wait for the fourth version of this. Heck, I can’t wait for the rest of today to see other presenters and how great their hair looks.
Chris Linford:
Yes, thank you. And hey, everybody in the chat, please show them some love and give them a thank you. Give them a shout. You guys, thanks so much.